How Does SEO and Social Media Work Together?

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Due to the ever-evolving digital landscape, it’s more important than ever for businesses to have a comprehensive understanding of how their search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing strategies integrate. Consumers are increasingly turning to online resources when making purchasing decisions, so having an effective SEO and social media presence can be integral in helping you draw potential customers to your business. However, not all companies fully understand how these two powerful digital marketing tools work together. I’ll share with you the relationship between SEO and social media and provide tips on how businesses can utilize them both effectively.

How Do Social Media and SEO Work Together? 

Hootsuite explains the relationship the best by explaining it this way: “Social SEO is the practice of including relevant information and keywords in your posts (in captions, alt-text, subtitles, and closed captions) to increase the chances of having your content surfaced to users browsing social media. SEO in social media works a lot like SEO in traditional search engines.”

Explain The Relationship Between Social Media and SEO Like I Am 5 Years Old

There’s no shortage of info on the internet about the why’s and how’s of social and search engine optimization. It can be a lot and really geeky really quickly.

Here’s my breakdown: Using a social media strategy and knowing your goal, posting on social platforms is a step in the overall marketing plan. There are certain things you can optimize on your posts to make them more searchable and to find the demographic you’re looking for. Social media also brings more traffic to your website which helps SEO and will ultimately help with your lead/conversion process.

The Impact Social Media Has on Your SEO

I like how SEM Rush explains it best: “Social media does not directly contribute to SEO ranking, but the links you share across social platforms increase brand exposure. They add up and influence search engine optimization in six directions:

  1. Extensive content distribution
  2. Longer lifespan of your posts
  3. Improve online visibility and organic traffic
  4. Increase brand recognition.
  5. Enhance brand reputation
  6. Boosts local search engine optimization (SEO)

Your shares across social media sites have no place in SEO rankings. Still, when more people share your content throughout social media, it generates social signals that indicate your posts are useful to your target market.”

I’d like to add that there are a few other ways that social positively affects your SEO:

  • Social posts are indexed faster 
  • Using engagement data from each of your social platforms to inform your content will improve your SEO 
  • Social media builds search demand 
  • By using the engagement data from your social media, you can better identify your audience for your SEO content.

Make These Two Marketing Tools Work for You

Ultimately, having an effective SEO strategy combined with an engaging presence on social media will help you hit your business goals in the long run. If you’re looking to maximize the impact of your social media activity on your overall online presence, let’s schedule a time for a consultation. Together we can create a plan that focuses on making sure your content is reaching your target audience and driving traffic from both search engines and social media platforms.

Email Audit: A Checklist to Determine Where Your Weaknesses Lie

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Are your emails working as hard as they can for you? If you’re not sure, then it’s probably time to conduct an email audit. As a small business owner or entrepreneur in today’s digital age, having high-performing emails can be the difference between reaching an engaged audience and getting lost in a sea of unopened messages.

Why You Want to Conduct an Email Audit on Your Email Marketing

Are you looking for ways to improve your email marketing? Would you like guidance on how to ensure it’s effective? A key strategy is to conduct an email audit. An email audit allows you to identify any weaknesses in your current emails, helping to ensure they are engaging and provide maximum impact. 

Understanding where the weak spots may be will focus efforts on improving delivery and open rates in order to get the best results from our campaigns.

An email audit may seem overwhelming at first—there are so many details to consider!—but don’t worry. I have created a checklist below to make the process much simpler. It will provide valuable insights into how you can improve and refine your email strategy. So, get ready to learn where your weaknesses lie and start smashing those goals!

Your Email Audit Checklist:

Check Your Subject Lines

Your subject line is the first thing recipients see when they receive your email, so it’s important to make sure that it’s clear, concise, and engaging. Are they clear and concise? Do they accurately reflect the content of your email? 

A good subject line will entice recipients to open your email, while a poor subject line will likely result in your email being deleted without being read. To ensure that your subject lines are effective, consider using a tool like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.

 

Examine Your Email Content

Once you’ve determined that your subject lines are up to par, it’s time to take a look at the content of your emails. Are you providing value to your recipients? Is your content interesting and relevant? If not, it’s likely that your emails are being ignored or deleted. To keep recipients engaged, make sure that your email content is well-written and relevant to their interests.

 

Review Your Call-To-Action

Your call-to-action (CTA) is the part of your email where you ask readers to take a specific action, such as visiting your website or making a purchase. An effective CTA will be clear and concise, telling your audience exactly what you want them to do. Additionally, your CTA should be placed prominently in your email so that recipients can easily find it.

 

Evaluate Your Sender Name and Email Address

The sender’s name and email address you use for your business emails can have a significant impact on whether or not recipients open and read them. If you’re using a personal email address or an unrecognizable sender name, there’s a good chance your emails are going straight to the trash. To increase the chances of recipients opening and reading your emails, use a professional sender name and email address associated with your business.

 

Assess Your Email Frequency

How often are you sending emails to your list? If you’re bombarding your email list with multiple emails each day, there’s a good chance they’re getting sick of hearing from you. This leads to them either ignoring or unsubscribing from your list. On the other hand, if you’re not sending enough emails, you may be missing out on opportunities to engage with potential customers. To strike the right balance, consider sending one to two emails per week.

 

Analyze Your Open Rates

Another important aspect of an email audit is to analyze your open rates. This will give you an idea of how many people are actually opening and reading your emails. If your open rates are low, it could be a sign that your emails are not relevant to your subscribers or that they’re not interested in what you have to say.

 

Examine Your Click-Through Rates

In addition to open rates, you should also look at your click-through rates. This will tell you how many people are actually clicking on the links in your emails. If your click-through rates are low, it could be a sign that your emails are not interesting or the call-to-actions are not effective.

 

Review Your Unsubscribe Rate

Finally, review your unsubscribe rate. This will give you an idea of how many people are choosing to unsubscribe from your email list after receiving one of your emails. If your unsubscribe rate is high, it’s a sign that something is wrong with either your content or your delivery and you’ll need to make changes.

Keep This Email Audit Checklist Handy

Email audits can be intimidating, but it’s an essential tool to have in the modern marketing landscape. The potential benefits range from improved email performance and reduced spam reports, to better understanding your customer base and reaching a more engaged audience. 

Reviewing your emails with this checklist will help you identify key metrics like click-through rate, deliverability quality, content alignment, responsiveness, subscriber list management, and more. Executing these strategies will give you a great opportunity to adjust your strategy accordingly and achieve maximum impact with your emails. 

Conduct regular audits of your email campaigns as doing them too rarely can cause underlying issues that threaten email performance and reputation scores. Now is the perfect time to start examining email performance and pinpointing opportunities for improvement by sprucing up metrics such as spam trap churn rate or unsubscribe rate. Beginning your email audit now could end up making a huge difference in the long run.

Need Help with Your Email Growth and Marketing?

This is the perfect time to get email and email automation set up for your company. If you’re looking for help with audits, strategy, or setting up automation in your marketing and emails, reach out! Check out my contact page to set up a quick chat to discuss your needs.

What is ChatGPT? Here’s What You Need to Know

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AI, or Artificial Intelligence, has blown up discussions recently with talk of ChatGPT and other AI platforms’ incredible ability to respond naturally to questions and requests. When it comes to digital marketing, AI has been around but now its seamless integration is cause for both concern as well as celebration. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, let me get you up to speed.

What is AI or Artificial Intelligence?

The simplest definition from the web is the development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. In other words, computer programs are coded to recognize inputs and then act as though they are human.

I’m not talking about robots. You’ve likely already encountered these when on a website and a chat box popped up. Most times, a chatbot is who originally begins the conversation and will continue unless you need more detailed help than the bot has been programmed for.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is new, having been launched in November 2022. Similar AI programs such as Jasper, Writesonic, CopyAI, and others have been around for a couple of years. They’ve been used quite extensively and have been improving their responses as well as expanding their abilities over the years.

There’s currently no charge to try out the ChatGPT website which can be found at chat.openai.com. Once you sign up on the website, you can check out OpenAI’s (the company that created the app) Chat GPT to see for yourself it has been designed in such a way that a person of any age can use it.

Is Google’s Bard the Same as ChatGPT?

Google has a very similar product about to come out named Bard. It will also reply to your questions in a very conversational tone. It’s speculated, but not known yet if it will be able to do the same for creating content you can use for your marketing.

What Can ChatGPT Do for My Digital Marketing?

How many times have you heard that content is king over the years? And how hard have you tried to keep the content machine running for all your marketing efforts?

ChatGPT and other programs such as Jasper offer the ability to generate ideas and create written content faster than without it. Some claim the quality of the output is in some cases higher quality than what they can produce for themselves.

If you’re currently writing all your own blogs, emails, social media posts, landing pages, and web page content, something like ChatGPT might be able to take some of the burdens off your shoulders. But much like when you hire a tax preparer, you will need to be involved to a large degree to get the most out of the platform.

What Are Experts Saying About AI and Programs like ChatGPT and Bard?

New reports have recently published articles about Buzzfeed firing staff and replacing them with AI-generated content as well as college professors integrating ChatGPT into the classroom.

Ruth Carter, a licensed US attorney focusing on copyright, trademark, and intellectual property matters, pointed out these articles and commented, “AI will give mediocre writers a chance to compete with average writers. Or it might help average writers get to the same or slightly better output faster.”

Leading digital marketer and entrepreneur, Neil Patel makes note of all the ways that AI is a part of our every day now. Platforms such as ChatGPT will just be another way we enhance our lives, according to Patel – but it won’t take over. Examples such as Siri, Alexa, and even Grammarly are AI that we are very used to using and that help us save time, but they do not take over aspects of our lives.

Need Help with Your Digital Marketing?

Do you have questions about AI and if you should integrate it into your marketing strategy? I love to meet with entrepreneurs and business owners to discuss how they can increase web traffic and conversions through a comprehensive marketing strategy. Schedule a consultation to discuss your goals!

Produce Better Social Media Results with These 5 Metrics

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Declare 2023 to be the year your marketing efforts bring serious ROI for your business. To do this, you may have to do what you’ve never done. The last few years have been….different. This year, we have the chance to take everything we’ve learned and focus on creating content and marketing that performs both for your ideal customers and for your business goals.

Tracking Your Marketing Efforts is Important… Really Important

If you don’t track your marketing efforts like a dog in hunting season, let’s start there. There’s a saying in marketing circles that I have witnessed to be true. And that is, that which is tracked can be improved. Simply, you can’t know if you’ve improved or if you’ve met goals if you don’t track your work.

Reading the Story Your Marketing Data Tells You

I like to say that every client’s data tells a story. I collect the data so that I can read what the customers and potential customers are telling us. 

Customers vote with their pocketbooks and potential customers vote by responding to your marketing efforts. Look at it this way, you know a customer knows you and enjoys your product/service. They SHOULD want to buy from you again. If they aren’t, why?

Potential customers have a bigger variety of challenges to address when determining why they aren’t converting to become a customer. And in both cases, data will tell you why.

Social Media Metrics You Should ALWAYS Pay Attention To

I tell everyone that the most important metrics to pay attention to are Growth and Engagement. These create the basis for all other metrics but just these two data sets alone tell you so much.

Growth – if you aren’t growing, you’re dying. Growth may be small and that’s actually ok. Of course, we’d like to get 100 new followers each day but look at those 100. Are they actually people that can benefit from your product? Will they be interested in buying your services?

Engagement – for all the effort you put into your content, you want to know people are engaging with it. At this point, everyone knows to engage on social media for the content they’d like to see more of by giving a like, comment, share or save the content. If hardly anyone is interacting at all with your content – review your content.

Social Media Metrics: The Rest of the Story

Here are the other top metrics to look at so you can understand how to better reach your target audience and convert them.

REACH

Sometimes confused with Impressions, Reach is the number of unique viewers that saw your post. The unique accounts are the sum of your follower count and accounts that shared the post’s follower counts. It’s eyes on your content. With more than 75% of people over age 13+ on social media, there’s no reason you should have no one seeing it.  

Amplification Rate/Virality Rate

Amplification is the rate at which your followers take your content and share it through their network. The virality rate is very similar with the main difference being that amplification is the math involved to arrive at these numbers. 

This is a metric you want to grow but in a strategic way. Again, you’re not trying to be all things to all people. You don’t want that. You want to reach people who you can help with your product or service and who will gladly pay you. You know that your strategy is working when this number grows and your ROI does as well.

Social Referrals

Neil Patel, an SEO expert, describes social referrals as being just like Amazon’s reviews except for social media. Essentially, it is people vouching for you. This is important as you want to be able to show rightfully skeptical people who have never heard of you or your company how wonderful you are. People buy from those they know. And people can get to know you well from social media!

Need Help Getting Better Results from Your Social Media Efforts?

I love helping businesses get seen, be heard, and create more new relationships that in turn, bring a higher ROI. Getting data requires setting up analytics and then knowing what to look for and how to create a strategy from that “story”. 

If you’d like to talk about your data as well as how to create and implement a strategy to increase your ROI in 2023, let’s schedule a time for a consultation. I’d love to add you to my list of delighted clients. 

 

Tired of Losing Your Best Marketing Staff?

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You’re looking at your marketing budget and know that it has been cut significantly. You don’t like any of the options you have to continue on with the new budget. And, you’re losing staff for a myriad of reasons. Your question is: How do I keep my best marketing staff?

I hear this a lot lately. Many companies have been seeing unprecedented turnover. Not only is this costly for the company but it costs the marketing team time and momentum on campaigns and launches.

Here Are Steps You Can Take to Keep Your Best Marketing Staff:

1. Basics

Let’s start at the beginning. After you have evaluated your department or your marketing agency, determine who is performing to the level you are happiest. If the agency is not getting close to the established KPIs and your ROI isn’t thrilling, ask to speak with them and have an honest discussion about what the challenges are.

Start with knowing what is working and what is not. We want to spend time and energy focusing on people and activities that are adding to the bottom line and we want to eliminate what is not working.

2. Evaluate

After you know what isn’t working, take a look at why. Ask staff why they think certain strategies or campaigns or staff aren’t performing to the level expected. 

Let’s eliminate the issue being your management style. What I mean by that is if you find out that your directions to staff aren’t clear or are vague and you aren’t available to answer questions when needed. Or, if you haven’t accurately budgeted for ads or marketing tools, then we need to make improvements to the process. 

3. Educate

Give time and opportunities to your staff for professional development. You’ll see who makes the most of the ability to increase their effectiveness and may possibly change how you see one of your underperforming employees. 

Professional development is one of THE biggest issues brought up over and over by those leaving their jobs today. It is important for those working for you to know that not only will they be trained well so they are set up for success but that they have the best up-to-date training as their peers.

4. Flexibility

Being flexible where you can be is important. If someone wants to work from home or another location, work toward making that happen. When hiring, extend your offer to those who work remotely from another state if possible. 

Flexibility shows you value those who work for you and sets a positive tone for the work environment. I often find people are more productive when given the flexibility to work around family caregiving obligations.

5. Feedback

Giving a review once a year is not going to help you keep your best and brightest. In fact, it could breed contempt. Instead, schedule weekly or monthly one-on-one meetings to go over regular items. This allows you and the staff to talk about issues before they become a real problem and affect someone’s review.

Giving regular feedback that recognizes the wins and hard work along the way while addressing items that you’d like to see improve goes a long way toward creating a safe atmosphere to work. 

Also, ask about ideas and improvements your staff would like to see in these meetings. Productivity can be increased by using ideas within your own tribe.

6. Outsource

Hear me out: I’m not suggesting you outsource every position in your company. Strategically look at the results from #1 when you were evaluating staff for performance. Start here with outsourcing. 

If you’re looking for a way to keep your budget within limits, the ability to add more expertise when needed, and get people who are really into their job – then you should look at outsourcing. The reason is that you can get a lot of bang for your buck. 

  • You don’t have to do all the paperwork for hiring someone and training.
  • You can bring them on for a limited time and really see the quality of work before committing to anything longer-term.
  • Using an agency you can be assured they can meet your needs such as when you have a seasonal business.

Consistency Is Key for Marketing and You Need Your Team for That

Use the steps I listed to help you attract and keep your best employees. Creating an atmosphere where employees feel appreciated and are rewarded for a job well done is the basis for all your efforts. 

Hire Marketing Help That Is Reliable

If you’re looking for help training new hires in your marketing department or would like to outsource any or all of your digital marketing, let’s talk! Contact me to schedule a consultation. I love helping small to medium-sized businesses gain a competitive advantage over their competition.

Top Free and Paid Market Research Tools – Start 2023 Off Right!

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Running a business requires you to know as much as possible about your target market. You might think that doing this requires paying a marketing firm to run an in-depth analysis. Or as those of us in marketing call it – market research. This is not the case.

Instead, you can do your own market research to learn as much as possible about your target audience and prospective customers. I’m going to share how you can start 2023 with this stockpile of information at your disposal.

How Does Market Research Help My Marketing?

In a nutshell, market research helps your business because it reminds you of what should be driving every decision—your customers. If you don’t consider what your customers want (and need) then you will quickly find yourself out of business. In fact, a recent survey has shown that as little as one bad experience from a customer can spread like wildfire and cut your customer base by as much as two-thirds.

Receive Valuable Market Research Data Quickly, at Your Fingertips, and for Free

Unless you have an extremely unique situation or complex problem you’re trying to solve, the free tools that I am about to share will give you information that is profitable.

Here are the Top Free Market Research Tools:

 

  1. Google Trends —

This tool, introduced in 2006, is one of the best when it comes to understanding the market. It shows you a ranking of what words people are searching for when they go to Google.

Considering Google processes almost 100 billion searches a day, that’s a lot of data to have to sort through. What makes this great (besides the huge amount of data it sorts) is that the tool is easy to use and creates an easy-to-understand line graph showing how popular the term is.

The only downside for Google Trends is that it doesn’t give you an exact number of how many people are searching for that term. (It gives a ranking out of 100 but you don’t know exactly how many people specifically have entered that term.) Additionally, you may find that some of the related topics that you are shown may not actually be related to what you need to know, so a little sifting on your part may be necessary. But, considering what you get (and the fact that it’s free to use), this is something you should be utilizing.

 

  1. Think with Google —

While a lot of people “in the know” have heard of Google Trends, Think with Google often slips under the radar. This platform is a one-stop shop for data including statistics and studies. If you want to do easy-to-use market research, this is the tool for you.

Think with Google is split into four categories that all center on market trends (Consumer Insights, Future of Marketing, Marketing Strategies, and Tools), but this is the only real drawback as the system solely deals with marketing information.

 

  1. Facebook Page Insights —

Moving away from Google, let’s look at one of the most popular social media platforms and how you can use it for market research. Chances are, you probably use Facebook to reach its nearly 3 billion users. Page Insights will allow you to look at your posts and how they perform with your audience.

One of the biggest draws for this tool is that Facebook offers two courses on how to use it. Unfortunately, it’s limited to looking at your data—so you can’t look at overall trends or other competitor information. But if you are looking to engage with social media, this free tool is definitely something for you.

 

  1. LivingFacts —

If you’ve ever heard of the Pew Research Center and the US Census Bureau, then you know they are like a one-stop-shop for statistics. LivingFacts is a great resource in that it takes this data and condenses it into easier-to-digest overviews. What is really great about this resource, besides the huge treasure trove of information, is that you know the information is accurate and can be trusted.

 

  1. Census Bureau —

If you’re looking for demographics, you can always go to the source, the Census Bureau. This is updated with over 130 surveys each year to give you the best overall demographic feel for trends in the United States. If you have a NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code for your business, you can actually sort data based on what fits your industry. If there is a downside, it may be that there is SO MUCH information that it may be hard to sort.

 

Here Are the Top Paid Market Research Tools:

While there are a lot of free research tools, there are a few that charge a fee but in my opinion, they are TOTALLY worth the money. These include:

  1. SurveyMonkey (Basic Plan Is Free/Premium Plan Is $99 Per Month) —

What makes SurveyMonkey such a great tool is that it doesn’t use data and statistics compiled by another source. Instead, you can create your own surveys and gather the data that you specifically need.

You can send out the survey through email or social media or even put it on your web page. The downside here is that you may not get as many responses as you’d like. But if you give this a try, you may be surprised at how much information you will get.

 

  1. Statista (Basic Plan Is Free/Premium Plan Is $59 Per Month) —

This site is known for not only its great data but also the very visual way that it presents it so that the information is easier to digest. Statista is constantly being updated, which sets it apart as well. You might find that a chart you look at one month has changed data the next month as the charts and graphs will be updated to reflect those changes.

 

  1. Typeform (Limited Free Plan/Premium Plan Is $25+ Per Month) —

This user-friendly application gives you pre-made templates allowing you to create marketing tools. You can also create your own surveys and marketing forms that you can use in your day-to-day work and on your website.

Typeform is available on mobile devices. Remember, most people today access the internet from their smartphones. So be sure to get them where they are!

 

  1. ​​Buzzsumo (Basic Plan Is Free/Premium Plan Is $99 Per Month) —

This website combs through several billion articles and trillions (yes, TRILLIONS) of social media posts to help you find the data you need to engage your audience. This site lets you see what people are talking about online and what is important to them so you can then use that to better market to your customer base.

 

  1. Ubersuggest (Premium Plan Is $29 Per Month/Lifetime Plan Is $290)—

If you’ve been working in marketing, then you know all about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing. Ubsersuggest is geared strictly around these two concepts. It allows users to check their website to see how their SEO efforts are doing and to check the sites of their competition to see how they can change their domain to take the lead in search engine rankings.

Start Your 2023 by Gathering Data to Create a Dynamic Marketing Strategy

Data is a powerful tool for marketers—in fact, it may very well be the most important weapon in your arsenal. If you are looking to best invest your money for marketing purposes, then having an experienced marketing expert analyze the data and recommend the best strategy is the best use of your money.

Would You Like Help with Your Market Research Data?

I love helping clients with their marketing strategy and implementation. It’s a great way to grow your customer base and create brand awareness while increasing profit. If you’re interested in learning more about working with me, contact me to schedule a consultation!

 

 

Planning Your Digital Marketing Strategy and Budget for 2023

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The new year is fast approaching and if you’re working with the executives in your organization to create a Q1 budget for 2023, I have your back! There’s so much to consider going into our third-year post Pandemic. I break it down for you so you know you’re creating a winning budget that increases web traffic and lead conversions.

Let’s start by looking at each area of marketing you’re going to assign dollars to.

Your Strategy and Budget for 2023

Content Marketing

Content covers a large area of marketing. This can be all the words you use on your social media, emails, ads, website, blogs, landing pages, videos, infographics, white papers—the list goes on. It makes sense that a large part of your 2023 budget should go to this area of your marketing strategy. If you’re putting emphasis on organic SEO, it is even more important if you want to see results.

Let’s look at a few stats to show you what I mean:

  • In 2021, short articles were the third best content choice for B2B (business-to-business) marketing. (Short articles are those with 3,000 words or less.)
  • Sales are used by over half (60%) of marketers to measure whether their content marketing strategy was successful.
  • The majority (56%) of marketers see blogs as an effective area of content and 10% of those see them as offering the biggest ROI (return on investment) for marketing.

Since every organization’s budget amount will vary, we’re going to discuss percentages. The bottom line is that the areas you want to focus on should get the highest percentage of your budget money.

Content marketing should be around 40-60% of your budget. You can use that budget to outsource a content writer and know that you’re getting a professional, experienced in that one specific area. You can get more bang for your buck by focusing on a content marketing writer rather than having a “jack-of-all-trades” who doesn’t master content marketing.

Your strategy is to:

  • Identify the highest ROI channels for reaching your ideal customers;
  • Once you’ve identified the top 3, focus 75% of your content marketing time, resources, and most importantly – budget dollars—on those areas.
  • This should be re-evaluated every quarter. Social platforms, ad servers, and technology change fast these days and you need to constantly shift your budget priorities as needed.

Areas of Content You Should Evaluate for ROI

Emails/Newsletters  

Ever since the invention of email, every marketing study has said that nothing—NOTHING—has a bigger ROI than email. But it all comes down to if it is done correctly.

Not even social media can compete with email marketing. The pros include not having to deal with social platforms saying you can’t post about this topic or run that ad.

Additionally, you can pull data to see what your audience responds to and focus on those findings. Seriously, it should be at the top of your list to utilize.

Blogs

Next to emails, blogs are high ROI as there is little cost involved and usually that cost is just someone you have writing the content for you.  This is where you want someone who understands SEO and how to write so that potential customers will read and look around the website. We happen to know someone if you’re looking for help. 😉

Ads and Landing Pages

This area usually depends on WHERE you place ads and how well you create them. Content is important and each platform has its own requirements as to what works best. If you’re not doing a lot of blog or email content, then you may need to spend more in this area to bring traffic to the website and create leads.

Content Created for the Sales Team

Your sales team will tell you what content you need to focus on. This is because they know your customers best and they know what they hear from leads. They also know what questions are repeatedly asked by those same customers and how they would like to direct those questions to be answered. Whether that be on a website FAQ or pamphlet or perhaps a social media infographic, you need your sales team to let you know what avenue to pursue.

Ad Spending

This should be somewhere between 25-40% of your budget. Ultimately, the final total will depend on how much you invest in your organic strategy and how well that strategy produces conversions/profit. It could be more than 40% if you are focusing on paid ads.

The numbers must make sense and you must consider the platforms you’re spending on. A Google Ad spend is different from a Facebook or Instagram ad budget. For a deeper analysis of what makes the most sense and the highest ROI for your industry and budget, talk to an experienced professional. (If you want to contact me right now, feel free.)

Technology and Software Subscriptions and Purchases

These days, for the best analytics to determine how successful any of your efforts are, you need something to manage the data. This category can cover a wide range depending on the price and how robust the tools they offer are.

If you don’t have a customer relationship management (CRM) program, then you might want to look into getting one. Also, a social media management tool makes a lot of sense as well. It will manage all of your social media platform data and allows you to see who is engaging with you so you can nurture possible leads and take action against online trolls.

As I mentioned earlier, having email marketing software is really helpful. Mailchimp and Constant Contact both call themselves Online Marketing Companies and that’s for a good reason. They now offer a very robust toolbox to use for more than just email.

At this point, if you can find a platform that offers just the right amount of form, function, and data in a way that seems intuitive to you, then it is worth being a line item on your budget sheet. Ideally, this category would be in the 10% – 25% range depending on how big your budget is and how much you prioritize content and ad marketing spending.

Creating a Marketing Budget Can Be Stressful. Use This Guide to Help.

Budgeting right now can be an insane process as many people are still trying to figure out what the “new normal” is going to be in this post-pandemic world. But these standards and rules ensure that your business not only survives but thrives.

Would You Like Help with Your Digital Marketing?

I love helping clients with their marketing strategy and implementation. It’s a great way to grow your customer base and create brand awareness while increasing profit. If you’re interested in learning more about working with me, contact me to schedule a consultation!

 

What You Need to Know About Repurposing Content for Social Media

One of the biggest issues I see my clients dealing with is keeping up with the hectic pace of their marketing. Specifically, they have a hard time maintaining all their digital work—writing blog posts, updating social media, responding to emails, and creating ads. 

It’s a huge component of running a business in the 21st century. But finding enough time during the day can be a daunting task. One way to potentially fix this problem is to “repurpose” your content. 

So many of us are trying to create a blog and relevant social media posts on a set schedule. We forget we can use a lot of content we already have with a bit of tweaking. And, as we create new content with repurposing in mind, we can reduce the amount of time we spend on content creation. Let me show you what I mean.

Why Repurpose Content?

Let’s start by talking about why you should consider repurposing your existing content. Think of it this way:

  • Repurposing saves time. There are just so many hours in the day and running a business seems to take all of them. By repurposing your existing content into new material, you’re saving time and energy that can be better spent on other avenues of your business (and your personal life)! And by planning when creating new content, you can create once and use the content in multiple ways.

 

  • Repurposing ensures everyone on all social channels sees your content. Let’s face it, not everyone is on the same social media platform (and there seems to be a new one regularly). By repurposing your material, you’re making sure that new followers are getting your content along with those who might not have seen it through some of your other channels.

 

  • Repurposing maintains consistency. You want to deliver consistency for your brand, and this comes in two forms. First, you want to be consistent about when you post. The other is that you want the consistency of the message. Posting the same message on all channels helps.

 

  • Repurposing takes advantage of the algorithms on all social platforms. Not all social media platforms are alike when it comes to their content algorithms. So, if you can tweak your content from one platform to make it more amenable to another, it prevents having to generate constant content while also ensuring the content is seen across all platforms.

 

How To Repurpose Content

You’re on board with the benefits of repurposing but how do you do it? 

I suggest you start with creating video content. Video is the most editable content and is a great place to start. The strategy is to create one themed piece of content and use it in multiple ways. Here’s how:

  • Record your video. Whether you’re making a podcast, a webinar, or a livestream video, be sure to record it. How many times have we forgotten to record our Zoom interview or to save the livestream in the correct location? Plan ahead and keep the recording as it will be used many ways!

 

  • Create a transcript for the video. There are resources online such as Microsoft Word (online Teams version) and Rev.com that can create a quick, easy transcript of your video. Then, you can take the transcript and turn it into a blog by adding more to what you’ve said or pulling in other resources. 

 

  • Mark the times in the video when you begin to discuss a new topic. This helps the reader should they want to hear more about the issue. It also helps the reader to know the topic they most want to know more about and where it is located so they can skip to that part in the blog or the video.

 

  • Use the blog/video for social media. Cut the video into 1 minute or less high impact points. These can be used as teasers on social media to bring in an audience for the whole video. Pull quotes from the video/blog to use as a post on your social media accounts. You can also create a carousel from tips or steps that were discussed in the original piece.

 

  • Use a poll for your social media audience. Let your tribe speak out on what they like about the topic or the format. This gives you the chance to interact with your followers and get a little more mileage out of the original blog/video.

 

For existing content on your website, look at data to see which were your most popular blogs. From there, take those blogs and provide more information, resources, or simply an update on the topic. Pull stats, quotes, and interesting facts from the piece to create new social media posts. You could record a video to accompany the blog as part of the update!

Take A New Approach to Creating Content

Trying to be constantly creative and inspiring for your customers and social media followers can take a crushing toll on your mental health and your business. Use these tips to create a consistent message that goes out to all your social and marketing platforms. This will drive home the message, giving you time to plan and create your messages. The best part is you’ll enjoy the process much more!

Would You Like Help with Your Content Marketing?

I love helping clients with their content strategy, planning, creation, and implementation. It’s a great way to grow your customer base and create brand awareness. If you’re interested in learning more about working with me, contact me to schedule a consultation!

4 Email Marketing Growth Hacks

hands on laptop with tiny email envelopes springing up - 4 Email Marketing Growth Hacks

Before social media hit the Internet and took over EVERYTHING in marketing, there was one stalwart that you could rely on to promote your business—email marketing. Now, many are finding a renewed sense of interest in this form of promotion because of numerous issues with social media. This includes the constantly changing social media algorithms and the “time outs” so many are experiencing from the various platforms. 

Even with all this chaos in the social media world, it’s important for you to have a way to communicate with your tribe and email marketing is one of the best. Growing your email list is a great way to increase your visibility as well as lead to conversions. If you’re not sure how to grow your email list, I have a few ideas to share with you.

Try These Email Growth Hacks 

 

Optimize Your Readers’ Mobile Experience

Focus on optimizing your email experience to ensure you’re getting your customers where they live and where they’re viewing the information. It used to be that everyone reading an email did so from their desktop computer. 

Now, only about 10% of people are reading emails on their desktops.  Instead, most people are reading these messages on their portable devices such as smartphones or tablets. So how does this change the game for you?

Let’s start with the obvious—your email will be read on a much smaller screen. This means that those huge graphics you’re including will be barely visible on a phone or tablet. Instead, design your emails using a mobile-friendly template. This will still be viewable on a desktop, but it will be easier to read on a phone. 

Keep your emails brief. For years now, the internet has been killing attention spans. If you send out a long, wordy email, then it’s going to go straight into the trash. Think of your marketing emails like those “fun size” Snickers bars. They are small enough to consume in one bite, but they will also whet your appetite for more information that they can get by following up with your website. 

 

Keep Emails to The Point and INTERESTING

If you’re sending out emails just because you think that is what you’re supposed to do or to just check a box, STOP. Emails are useless when readers begin to see there is no value for them to open the emails. Going through the motions because you think you must will actually hurt your business.

This negatively affects your email campaigns by skewing the numbers for people who were interested in your product or service but don’t want to waste their time with boring emails. You pay more for more emails and it can lead to negative numbers when they begin to unsubscribe. 

If you’re thinking, “How do I know what is interesting to my email subscribers?”, here’s what you need to do. Use your data. Every ESP (email service provider) has a data report you can pull for every email you send. In that data is the story of what it is your tribe is looking to receive from you.

Begin with info about your product or service that you get asked a lot. Behind-the-scenes videos and information are always interesting. Offering special discounts and email-only opportunities is sure to keep people wanting to open your emails. 

Be sure to check for spelling and grammar issues before you press send on the emails. Get a friend or colleague to check for you if you need to. Poorly written emails can turn off potential customers as badly as useless or uninteresting information.

Optimize Your Email Subject Lines

Think of subject lines as the key to getting in so you can market to your potential customer. If the subject line is not interesting or compelling, then they won’t even open the message. And what point is a marketing email if no one reads it? Look at your data to see if your open rates are low. If they are, then your subject line probably isn’t interesting enough to get them to click on the message. 

Automate Your Email Marketing

A lot of people worry that automating your email marketing is too expensive or too cold and impersonal to actually work. But, the return on investment is big when you consider the potential for success that it brings. Email automation makes it easier to target specific email recipients and personalize those emails. These two aspects make it more likely that the person receiving the email will open it and respond to it.

Email Marketing Is an Important Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Nobody is saying that you should throw out your whole social media marketing plan. But the reality is that it should not be your only form of marketing. A smart email marketing plan will bring in customers and clients if you plan properly.

Need Help with Your Email Growth and Marketing?

This is the perfect time to get email and email automation set up for your company. If you’re looking for help with strategy or setting up automation in your marketing and emails, reach out! Check out my contact page to set up a quick chat to discuss your needs.